Doctor Curmudgeon® So…I’m Waiting For My Twenty
By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman, is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist
What a woman!
Arising from a horrific childhood, Harriet Tubman was enslaved as soon as she was born. Her treatment was abominable. This brave woman was tortured and beaten; even suffering from severe head trauma when one of the overseers, aiming at someone else, threw a heavy metal object which collided with Harriet’s head. And for the rest of her life, she experienced headaches, seizures and dizziness.
Yet, she accomplished so much.
Managing to escape from slavery, she subsequently made many trips through the “Underground Railroad,” rescuing over seventy human beings. She continued these dangerous forays for many years, a tiny, disabled black woman armed only with her own incredible courage and resourcefulness.
Harriet Tubman astounds me. During the Civil War, she served her country as a spy and armed scout for the Union Army. In this capacity, she was the first woman (let alone a woman of color!) to actually lead an armed expedition. At the head of a group of scouts, and working under specific orders of Edwin Stanton, who was the Secretary of War, Tubman reconnoitered through South Carolina to provide important intelligence.
David Hunter, a Union Major General was an abolitionist. In collaboration with Harriet, he was able to assemble a group of former slaves into a regiment of black soldiers. At first, he was ordered to disband this unit, but he held firm and eventually got approval from Congress.
I marvel at how brilliant this woman must have been. Working through near constant pain, she used her energy and ingenuity to lead fugitives to safety and to jobs.
There is so much more to the story of his incredible black woman.
In 1896, speaking at a convention for Suffrage, she said, “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say – I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
Indeed…with all her accomplishments, she also played an active role in suffrage, working alongside Susan B. Anthony.
Finally, achieving a dream, she was able to purchase a small piece of land near Auburn, New York, allowing her to be able to provide a safe haven for family and friends who were searching for a good life. This was no small accomplishment for a black woman in that time.
And yet, even though there were many receptions and ceremonies honoring Harriet Tubman for her heroic service, she still lived in poverty, and in order to attend these festivities, was forced to sell one of her cows in order to purchase a train ticket.
Really?
No bill is honoring her yet?
A twenty is much too small. Should be no less than a one hundred thousand dollar bill!
Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”
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